Match Review: FC Nippon vs German-Swiss All Stars

• MD Seiji TACHIBANA
• -- Seiji DAIKUHARA
• -- Yasutaro FUJITA
• -- Kosuke SAKAI
• -- Yusuke KANEKO
• -- Ryota MURAKI
• -- Takuya TAKAHASHI
• -- Makito NAKATA
• -- Satoshi KABAYAMA
• -- Tetsu KAKIMOTO
• -- Yoshiaki MOTOHASHI

• -- Hiroyuki UCHIDA
• -- Jason CHUA
• -- Riku KITSUNAI
• -- Tomoaki IMAI
• -- Sho YASUI

We won as a result.

The final score was 3-1 but GAS had more chances to turn over the result. The coach Yasu was frustrated with the game. 7: Both couldn't settle the ball down. 8: GAS FK deflected and was about to be a opener. 9: GAS FW received a chip pass behind Nippon DF. But he missed this 1-1 occasion. 20: Nippon DF Daiku intercepted and dribbled near penalty are. His fast shot was a bit above the bar. 26: Kaki's cross ball was to Yasutaro, his shot was a bit above the bar. 27: The opener was by GAS. FW intercepted central DFs pass to left DF. GAS didn't miss this time. (0-1) 28: GAS got 1-1 occasion but couldn't make it. 31-39: Tachibana, Nakada, Daiku, had shots. 41: Kaki intercepted and dribbled to get 1-1 occasion. He didn't miss. (1-1) 42: Mochi brought Nakada's early cross with header to the goal. (2-1) 44: It was decided as offside but GAS had critical chance. 53: DF Kabayama had nose breeding. It didn't stop. Riku went into as a sub. 71: GAS started to slow down. Riku has been a fear factor for them. 77: Tachibana got 1-1 occasion but GAS GK prevented. Good forecast. 34-40: Sub Imai showed good performance but no goal. 87: GAS GK couldn't grub Nakada's FK. Kaki was in front of him. (3-1)

• Joseph Storrar GK
• Takahiro Kawabata DF
• Quirin Regensburger MD
• Diyar Mailepessov ST
• Thomas Suess --
• Victor Walz --
• Juergen Stich --
• Jan Wiechmann --
• Bastian Wolff --
• Phillip Von Pein --
• Florian Gädke --

• Daniel Grueber DF
• Robert Winkelmann DF
• Fumiaki OGURO --
• Thommy Lim --

Frustrating...

Despite the fact that everyone knew the importance of the match, it was probably the worst GAS match in the last two years (and there were some pretty bad matches in that period of time). Different to previous games where we lost unlucky but were the clearly better team, in this match our loss was absolutely deserved. Nobody seemed to be fit, capable to play a decent pass or willing to take on duels aggressively. To be fair the start was not too bad, but we should have made more out of our initial dominance. We had two or three 100% chances our strikers weren't able to convert until eventually Quirin anticipated a pass to Nippons left back, intercepted and made his way to the 1:0 lead (deserved at that time). Shortly after that another big chance by one GAS striker to increase to 2:0, unfortunately not used. What happened afterwards can from a GAS perspective easily be described as a disaster. Nippon did with us whatever they wanted, won every duel (even headers!!! despite a significant body size difference), sometimes they did not even have to force us in duels because we were just giving them the ball voluntarily by one of our plenty inaccurate passes. Before halftime Nippon turned the game in only five minutes to 1:2. Second half the difference of the fitness level was getting clearer and clearer. Instead of coming back stronger, willing to turn the match, the second half was even worse than the first one. Thommy did some nice saves but eventually adapted to the level of his teammates and let an easy ball slip out of his hands right infront of the Nippon striker who had no problem to score to the end result of 1:3 for Nippon. In order to utilize the potential that GAS definitely has with their squad, everyone will have to work on his own fitness level, come to practice more often and/or attend midweek games.